


we've both had no sleep

by autopsyofwebs



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (there's quite a lot of discussion about bees so fair warning), Alternative Universe - Elementary, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, apiphobia, girl!Zayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autopsyofwebs/pseuds/autopsyofwebs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elementary AU about bees starring Zayn as Joan and Harry as Sherlock and Zayn just wants to learn about bees ok.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we've both had no sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Regarklipop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regarklipop/gifts).



> I actually started this fic as a love letter to bees and then I realized I barely knew anything about them apart from swarming so if there are any mistakes, it's because of my spotty knowledge of them but yeah the summary is pretty self-explanatory. I just really like elementary and 1d so why not combine the two? Also this may or may not be part of a series of headcanons that I may end up writing about. MAYBE.

It’s been exactly one week since Zayn’s moved in and in that week she’s learned exactly three things. One, that Harry Styles likes being tied up. Two, that the tap for hot water in the bathroom only works after approximately 6 minutes of coaxing and 2 minutes of cursing. And three, that she might be in over her head.

She’s not exactly too sure how she ended up here, in a mostly bare room with half her clothes still packed in her suitcase, half still hung up in her apartment closet 5 blocks away.

It’s been a week and Zayn hasn’t quite gotten a hold of Harry yet and that worries her. Not that a person can be mapped and plotted and done away with in a week, but she’s usually on more sure footing at this point. It’s sort of her job to be.

She starts off wary. The dissonance between what she expects Harry Styles to be and what he actually is confuses her. But a week in, and the ever-present edge of wariness and anxiety has whittled away some into slight annoyance and fondness, if only because despite Harry’s attempts to seem charming and aloof and unpredictable, the knowledge that she could disarm him with a particularly slippery patch of floor puts her at ease. It's a strange line to walk, caught between uncertainty and comfort.

But she has to be stay on guard; it’s hard to tamp down on the feeling of not-so-much nosiness in her line of work as it is awareness of where Harry is, constantly running scenarios and possibilities of what he’s doing, what he _could_ be doing. In her job, temptation and reality are always tangled up in one another. It's not her place to feel bad about what's happened; what's done is done. It is her place however to watch over him.

She’s supposed to check up on him every 2 hours, and she knows if she leaves it to him she’d never know where he is, so she slips on a sweater and goes to find him.

In the time that Zayn’s known Harry, the place that he frequents most often, as she discovers, is the roof. It's mostly bare up there, a few stray golf balls and the brilliant New York skyline against washed-out concrete. In the center however, there's a shelf like contraption with movable frames containing hundreds of bees. His bees.

The first day she moved in, he showed them to her. (She didn't know if that gesture was one of vulnerability or one of intimidation, still doesn't know.)

So she goes to check the roof first, hopes her sweater’s thick enough for the biting weather. When she opens the metal door, she stiffens in suprise, her arms automatically drawing up to her chest in clenched fists.

It’s Harry. In a white beekeeper outfit. Grinning and absolutely _covered_ with bees. 

“What,” she says “the fuck Harry.”

-

As it turns out, the bees are _swarming_. Whatever that is.

She scrambles backwards in surprise as Harry lurches towards her and then stops, waving his arms as if he’s suddenly remembered, casually like he’s forgotten to pick up the milk from the store and not as if he’s forgotten that _there’s several hundred bees climbing all over him._

She groans. She hasn’t even had her fucking coffee yet.

He explains it to her, having to shout to be heard over the bees, but trying to whisper at the same time so as to not agitate them. It makes his voice go all hoarse and pitchy, and she smiles automatically. It’s such a disarming and silly-sounding thing that she starts to calm, her heartbeat slowing down.

“See, bees can only survive so long in a contained space like a hive. Normally, I would’ve recognized this ahead of time and set up another hive for them, but unfortunately, with everything that’s happened so far, I uh sorta … forgot.”

He sounds sheepish and a little disappointed. It reminds her of a lumbering, sad puppy and she resists the urge to pat his big curly head. 

“Anyways, the colony’s gotten too big for the hive and it needs to split so the new queen takes half of them with her and the other half go with the old queen to find a new home.”

He waves his arms carefully.

"Say hello to the other half!"

He keeps his limbs all outstretched, giving the bees as much space as possible. He looks like an overeager starfish. She shifts backwards slowly.

“They’re perfectly harmless at this stage.” He assures with a nod, his eyes large and his face almost comically serious. It’s not quite as effective when half of his expression is blocked by bees, but she appreciates the sentiment.

“They only attack when they feel like their home is in danger, but since they don’t technically have a home right now, they’re rather sedentary. I’ll have to call for some more honeycomb shelves later of course, or umm-”

He seems to finally realize the predicament he’s in.

“I guess you’ll have to call for them then.” He grins.

“But yes, they’re totally safe and well cuddly right now. All they really want is to find a home.”

She makes a face at the word _cuddly_ because who other than Harry Styles would use that word to describe _bees_ but.

She thinks of her half-empty suitcase, and her red and yellow coffee cup sitting in the cabinet drawer, the second coat hook that appeared out of nowhere her second day there and.

She nods, lowers her arms. Unclenches her fists.

“Yeah. I guess I can see that.”

-

Something that Zayn’s learned helps with new clients is establishing a base of familiarity. It’s easier to connect to her, aka the unfamiliar variable, if they’re at home, aka the familiar variable, which is why she moves in with them. Usually though, it also helps to find some sort of shared hobby or area of interest.

She’s come to view it as a positive experience, getting to learn about something new. She’s learned a lot from it. And from what she knows of Harry so far, he likes yoga and beekeeping. Yoga she’s at least heard about, but _beekeeping_. That’s definitely a new one.

-

Zayn decides to try yoga. Definitely the least intimidating of the two at first glance and she figures she ought to expand her exercise past occasional Sunday jogs and marathoning movies.

She gets a mat and everything, sets it up in the living room with Harry next to her. It’s more boring than she expected it to be, but she still does it; albeit clumsily and half distracted, Harry lecturing her about flexibility and quick reflexes (which she scoffs at given his general clumsiness when a sabre’s not involved) in a not-quite strict tone in the background. She's sort of half-heartedly trying to move into the beginning poses that Harry gave her, more preoccupied with watching him fold those long limbs of his into all those positions. It makes for a nice start to the day if nothing else, all that tan skin languidly stretching itself out on the musty carpet.  

She can already picture his frown when he realizes that she’s not paying attention to his instructions, the slight pout pushing out his bottom lip as he tries to mask it with indifference. She doesn’t realize she’s smiling at him until he frowns over at her, a drawn out _heyyy what are you laughing at_ that she then can’t help laughing at, even though she tries to muffle it into her shoulder.

But the next morning, she wakes up with an aching back and sore thighs, and not even the good kind, so she crosses that idea out and spends the entire day curled up on the couch, watching shitty cliché 80s movies and drinking ginger tea with honey. She'd found the honey in a jar in the kitchen and assumed it safe to use. It’s been sitting there for a while, or so she guesses, given its crystallized quality. It’s really sweet, seemingly sweeter than store-bought honey, immediately coating the inside of her mouth with an intense, but not altogether unpleasant taste of spicy ginger and gritty sugar.

-

She decides to look up books on bees. Harry spends a good portion of his week up there with them, so maybe if she learns more about them, they’l have something to talk about other than his poor sleeping habits and inability to communicate with her. That way, they can continue _not_ talking about his bucket of industrial padlocks and the fact that he has a locked drawer full of letters that he hides from her. But she understands. Recovery is a process, and so is learning someone else. She doesn’t expect someone like Harry to trust her at first glance. But she can at least try to give him a reason.

-

Western honey bee ( _Apis mellifera_ ).

That’s the scientific name for them. His bees.

Ten minutes in and a wiki article later, and Zayn hasn’t learned much more else, or much more of anything that'll provide useful in a conversation with Harry about them. Just a bunch of irrelevant facts that carry none of the interest or weight that it deserves, especially to him.

She ends up watching some national discovery or bbc documentary on bees in shitty quality from youtube. It’s interesting, has a gorgeous orchestral arrangement, but it’s a little bit too scholastic and she imagines herself 15 or 16 again, sitting behind a desk and desperately trying to keep awake in science class. It’s informative enough though and it leaves her strangely endeared with the little insects, the intricate roles and the hive all centered around the queen, the _reverence_ that it must take to love them.

-

Zayn doesn’t bother to shut off the alarm, just burrows further into her covers and hopes that she’ll drift back asleep despite the harsh, drilling sound. She does end up falling back asleep, but only for another 10 minutes before she’s forced to get up and turn both her alarms off, the urge to maim significantly quelling with the onset of quiet.

She gets dressed in her usual sweater and jeans, ties her hair up in a messy knot and forgoes washing her face to get the coffee machine on earlier. The kettle is off too and she sets it on as well, getting out the fruit and flower tea bags that Harry’d bought from some local market.

The silence seems to echo and she wonders if Harry is on the roof again, either checking up on his bees or playing golf up there, mapping out the trajectories of swinging clubs or the blood splatter pattern of a baseball bat to the head. Or he’s taking pictures of the New York skyline under pretense of photography when he’s really adding them to his Instagram account, fueled by his budding obsession with apps.

She goes up with one mug of black coffee and one mug of his fruity tea, tucking her fingers into her sleeves so she doesn’t burn herself.

Zayn opens the door to the image of him in his usual beekeeper costume, sitting on a wooden stool with his head bent shallowly to peer at one of the shelves that he’s pulled out.

She walks right up to him, sets the mugs down by her feet and sits down at the extra metal chair next to him. She’s not surprised when he doesn’t start.

“What are you doing?"

He doesn’t turn to look at her, but he does gently shift so she can see the shelves easier. There's a large magnifying glass that he’s pulled up in front of one of the shelves, the image distorted and flashing dimly in the early morning.

“I’m just,” he adjusts the glass delicately. “Checking up on them. They’re at a critical stage at the moment, the -“

“pupae are being fed right now right? It’s already been two weeks, so taking in the new queen’s mating flight, I’m guessing the workers are just past the pollen and honey diet and into the pupa phase. It’ll probably only be a day or so before they start to molt and then a few after that before they start to appear.”

Harry pauses, and glances back at her with curious eyes and quirked lips.

“Well Miss Malik, you’ve been holding out on me.”

He says it in that slow, pleased tone she’s only heard once before (the first time she met him, and his smile had both unnerved her and excited her because he wasn’t the only one who enjoyed a challenge), the one he has when he’s either surprised or delighted or both.

She hides her smirk behind her wrist and shrugs.

“Well,” he twists around to look at her head-on, “as you said, it’ll still be a few days until they appear, precisely 7 days and 13 hours still, and you’re a little off about the molting, some have started already, but yes, you’re right.” 

He turns his gaze back on his bees, his hands tucked under his gangly legs for warmth. She reaches down, hands him his cup before getting her own. He absent-mindedly blows at it, his body shifted towards her but his mind somewhere else. They watch the bees in silence, and Harry will occasionally lean forward to peer through the glass, whisper something softly to himself, before reclining in his seat again. Sometimes he’ll tell her what he murmured, sometimes he won’t. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like secrecy.

She’s looking at the bees when he glances back at her and murmurs,

“Not quite ready yet, but we’re getting there.”


End file.
